


Open the cargo bay door, Blast Off

by ultharkitty



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 09:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/306255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long before the war, Blast Off worked in deep space exploration. In this, he has taken an alien scientist on an expedition, but something’s gone wrong.</p><p>Contains: a brief mention of organic alien asexual reproduction that's modelled on certain plants, and very silly references to <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, crack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open the cargo bay door, Blast Off

**Author's Note:**

  * For [naboru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/naboru/gifts).



> A trill is a unit of time equivalent to around half a breem. I needed another system for Hydrix to use, as he isn't Cybertronian.

"Open the cargo bay door, Blast Off."

Silence. The shuttle might as well have been offline.

Hydrix tried again. "Blast Off, open the cargo bay door. Please." This last was an afterthought, tinged with Hydrix' growing panic. He furled his tendrils beneath his space-suit, attempting to calm himself. The shuttle was just being obtuse; hadn't his agent warned him about this? Cybertronian shuttleformers were the best long distance transport an experimental xenobiologist could ask for, but they were arrogant and easily offended.

"You _can_ hear me, can't you?" Hydrix' mandibles began to clatter, and he wished he had a piece of wood to chew on. But there was nothing to chew on out here in the deep dark reaches of space. Just an obstinate shuttle, a crumbling asteroid, and half a trill’s worth of acid in his atmospheric synthesiser. That made half a trill before the air ran out. It wasn't a pleasant prospect.

"Blast Off, can you hear me?" Hydrix flicked through the channels on his communicator. The shuttle was right there, the little lights glowing in his cockpit, but he just plain wasn't responding. It occurred to Hydrix that getting out to take a sample from the asteroid he was currently sitting on might not have been the most sensible of decisions. "Can you hear me, Blast Off?"

The silence rang. Hydrix shivered. It wouldn't do to panic, not out here. It was probably just a hardware malfunction. "Blast Off," he persevered, clinging to the idea that it was only a glitch and the shuttle couldn't actually hear him. "Are you getting this? Let me in!"

"I will," Blast Off said, and Hydrix' panic broke along with the silence. Four of his eyes closed in relief, and his mandibles stilled. Then the shuttle added, "If…"

"If?" Hydrix squeaked.

"If you _stop touching me,_ " Blast Off snapped. "You read the manual, you listened to my pre-flight briefing, and yet _still_ you can't keep those blasted tentacles to yourself!"

Hydrix's blasted tentacles went stiff, and the nictitating membranes drew across all of his eyes at once. So that was what this was about.

"I, uh, I…" It wasn't like he could help it, his tendrils had a mind of their own, literally a highly evolved subsidiary brain in each limb. With the right conditions, any one of those limbs could be nurtured into an independent copy of himself. He couldn't keep them still; they _needed_ to experience the universe.

A light began to flash on his pressure suit; that half a trill of breathable air was about to run out.

"You _what_?" Blast Off said, as though to remind Hydrix that his own survival and the survival of his un-fledged clones was entirely within the shuttle's… well, not his fronds, as he didn't have any of those. His hidden robotic hands?

"I'm sorry," Hydrix said. "I shall exercise better control in future, I promise. Um… can I come in now?"

The shuttle executed a very slow and showy roll, then opened his cargo bay door. "If you must."


End file.
